HONOR is a brand that, little by little, has begun to gain space in today’s difficult mobile market. After the independence of Huawei in 2020, the Chinese company has developed an aggressive strategy to position itself in the region and distance itself from companies that bet on aggressive prices and only in segments with higher volume. under the MWC 2023event in which announced the new Magic5 lineNIUSGEEK spoke with the Honor CEO George Zhao to discover what are the challenges that he assumes at the helm of this new project.
Zhao took up the challenge of leading the new era of HONOR after the acquisition of the Huawei sub-brand by Zhixin New Information Technology, a Chinese consortium of 30 companies based in Shenzhen. Under this new management, the responsibility of running HONOR as an independent brand brought new challenges and new approaches to gain traction in the technology market.
“Today we are focused on our human-centered philosophy. We are really focused on improving the experience that we bring to the consumer. We want to bring new things”, mentioned Zhao in a conference with international media, which was also attended by NIUSGEEK in Barcelona.
HONOR and a market shaken by COVID-19
Faced with the current conditions of the technology sector, in which certain health alerts in Chinese factories due to constant outbreaks of COVID-19 among Chinese employees, the availability of components often affects the construction of new devices. Faced with this situation that impacts the entire industry, HONOR establishes some clear ideas:
“As a brand, you can’t blame the economy. You must seek the motivation to change from within, not from without. If you only complain and do not look for solutions, you do not change anything. It is a good time to add value to the user, that is what we can do. We want to help people improve, give value and benefits. If we could all do this, the market would be better”, mentions the executive.
Precisely, China is a market that usually has its own advertisements, the same ones that are later adapted to the international market in events such as the Mobile World Congress and other conferences throughout the year. NIUSGEEK asked the CEO of HONOR which Chinese experiences he would like to implement in the rest of the world. This was his response:
“In fact, the Magic5 series is first released to the world from Barcelona, and then it will be announced in China. A lot depends on research and development, the global market is our priority. However, we believe this is a unique, not so separate combined solution between China and the rest of the world. Unfortunately, you can’t launch everything at the same time, there is a sequence. Europe, for example, has special requirements that we must verify little by little. They are different processes. That is why we must adapt and develop, but giving it time. I hope one day to bridge that gap, which, even for the iPhone or Samsung, is often difficult. The processes in each country are complex, but Honor’s effort is to close that gap.”
speaking of gaps
There are many times when prototypes of technology companies are leaked before official announcements, and for companies in the sector it is usually a bit difficult to deal with information leaks. On this topic, George Zhao responded to NIUSGEEK’s query on how HONOR deals with these leaks:
“Sometimes we’re looking at how we can fix it, and sometimes I’m just like, ‘Okay, I didn’t see this, I don’t want to see this.’ Even yesterday – in reference to Evan Blass’s leak of the Magic5 Pro model on Twitter the day before the team’s global announcement – we just thought ‘it’s done, let’s move on’. On the other hand, sometimes not everything is said. This is life. From our side we do not complain, but we handle the situation. And that’s it”.
The Magic5 series has already been announced in Peru, although only the Lite model is currently being sold. The 5 Pro and Vs range will be available in the coming weeks. For more details, we recommend you listen to the new episode on METADATA, RPP’s technology podcast, which includes an interview with David Moheno, Head of Communications and Public Relations at HONOR LATAM.